By Thomas R. O’Donnell
In 2014 Joni Ernst rode to the U.S. Senate from Iowa on a Harley, carrying a gun and a hog-castrating knife and touting her experience leading a National Guard transportation unit in Kuwait and Iraq.
Iowans fell for her military experience and polished ads about making Washington “squeal” and taking aim (with a pistol) at the political establishment.
Now Ernst is seeking reelection with President Donald Trump occupying her motorcycle’s back seat. Democrats see a vulnerable senator and candidates are circling for the right to face her.
Only one, however, has the rural and military record to match — and exceed — Ernst’s main appeals to out-state and independent voters.
Michael Franken calls himself “Iowa’s Admiral.” The three-star officer was raised on a farm in rural Northwest Iowa and worked his way through college at a meatpacking plant. His background could negate Ernst’s most powerful selling points.
Franken has a killer resume of leadership and political experience. He joined the Navy and advanced through the ranks, serving on four continents and commanding missile destroyers and international naval task forces. Franken was commander for the 4,000 ground personnel in Africa and the first director of the POW/MIA defense agency tasked with finding and identifying fallen service members worldwide.
In Washington, Franken served in think tanks before becoming the first military officer on the staff of Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy. He learned policy and budgeting, overseeing infrastructure and environmental compliance issues and authorization of a $150 billion budget as the Navy’s chief of legislative affairs.
So Franken’s international, policy, diplomatic and military experience — participating in nine of the 11 named military operations since the 2001 terrorist attacks — dwarf Ernst’s background. But Franken also has the complete rural resume to boot.
Franken was born and raised in rural — now deep red — Northwest Iowa, the youngest of nine children and the son of a machine-shop operator and a school teacher. Young Franken worked as a farm hand, welder, construction worker, truck driver and machine shop assistant to his father. At 17, he started working at the Sioux Preme Packing Company to pay for college. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Nebraska and, later, a master’s in physics from the Naval Postgraduate School. He’s also studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and the Brookings Institute.
Franken retired in 2017 after Donald Trump’s election and moved to Sioux City, in Northwest Iowa, not far from where he grew up.
Four other candidates are competing with Franken for the right to face Ernst in the fall — an indication of her comparatively weak standing with the voters. Many Iowans are disappointed with her lockstep support of Trump’s agenda, particularly the Republicans’ repeated attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act — yanking health insurance from thousands of constituents. Trump’s tariffs and weakening of the Renewable Fuel Standard — which supports the state’s corn-based ethanol industry by requiring oil producers to buy millions of gallons of their product — have upset farmers, who have seen prices fall and debts mount. Ernst’s attempts to dissuade Trump and the Environmental Protection Agency from their course have been weak and ineffective — a mark, perhaps, that she fears blowback from the presidential Twitter account and vocal MAGA followers.
Franken is not the choice of the Democratic establishment to face Ernst and therefore his fundraising has lagged. Yet he has trod the state’s highways and main streets, leaving behind impressed voters. Those who hear Franken and his story generally become supporters. As a candidate whose appeal extends beyond the urban areas of central Iowa, he could be the opponent Ernst fears the most.
Go to Admiral Franken's website to find out more and to donate.